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I'm not sure if I should post this in Sports or politics, but I'm posting it here because I think it's more of a discussion of what's wrong with American culture. I'm sure most of us have heard about how legendary Penn State coach Joe Paterno was for all practical purposes an accomplice to child rape. But that's not what I want to talk about so much as discussing how THOUSANDS of Penn State fans have reacted. Instead of coming out in solidarity of the victims, they rioted to protect their chance at going to a bowl.

So, here's my question: how has American culture fallen so far as to value a winning football franchise above everything else? I wish I could say that this is a Penn State-specific problem, but we all know rapes and abuse of other students by football players and coaches goes unpunished all the time. What makes Penn State so notable is the case involved little kids.

PS - to everyone who argued with me about whether or not America is a rape culture, I give in. I was wrong - you were right. Any sane culture would have Penn State fans protesting outside Paterno's house.

This is FACTUALLY untrue. Sandusky did not work at Penn State in 2002 and was not there 'every day' saying hello to people in the locker rooms or halls. NO attacks in the Grand Jury report happened at PSU after 2002. Does not mean there weren't any, just that we have no evidence of it currently.

It's statements like these, made without knowledge of the situation and based mostly on visceral emotions and reactions on ANY side of this discussion that do not serve to give justice to the victims and tend to only bring more pain on anyone involved.

Edit: Reread the report to verify timing of PSU locker room attacks.

Exactly. This has, like most media sensation stories, turned into the telephone game. The facts of the case aren't fully known, and we don't know what McQueary said to Paterno, or how Paterno perceived what was said to him.

But the example you highlighted is a perfect illustration of how 'telephone' works. We go from Sandusky being retired and occasionally showing up, to Sandusky being on staff and best pals with Paterno and eventually it will be that Sandusky and Paterno were sharing the kids, and OMG let's nuke the entire university from orbit just to be sure. Sheese.

The NCAA has no jurisdiction in criminal cases like this, and has already stated they are deferring to law enforcement, so the point is moot on that, regardless. NCAA death penalty cases are extremely rare anyway, and always involve matters directly related to the sport at hand, usually something to do with cheating.

edit: there has been exactly one death penalty case in the history of NCAA football. It was to SMU in 1987 for "indiscriminate cheating". They have since been reinstated.

There have been 5 cases total. All involved NCAA rules violations, where the teams cheated.

I think that over-reacting in the case of child rape is probably a lot better than under-reacting.

Agreed but I think that's a slippery slope justification for any kind of inappropriate action. I'm not saying that's how you're using it, but it can easily be applied to justify punishing anyone. Thankfully under and over reacting aren't our only options.

The McMartin Pre-school trial, involving charges of child molestation, lasted six years and cost Los Angeles more than $16 million. It ended in 1990 in a deadlock on 13 of its 64 counts and with a dismissal of all charges. There was not a single conviction. What happened? Mr. Mann's answer offers little or no consolation to those who might rhapsodize mindlessly about "the American people." This is a portrait of mass hysteria, fueled by panic-stricken parents, overzealous prosecutors, irresponsible talk shows and an out-of-control tabloid press.

For months on end, the nation was getting sensational headlines and television reports about Satanic cults, animal sacrifices and child pornography. Geraldo Rivera, for one, was positively heart-wrenching in his concern for the supposed young victims he dragged in front of his camera. Scandals suddenly erupted at pre-schools across the country. The charges grew more bizarre. There were even convictions, some now being overturned.

The tale is truly astonishing, beginning with initial charges having been filed by a woman who turned out to be a seriously disturbed alcoholic whose former husband may have been abusing her young son. But once planted, the seed of paranoia takes firm root. Many of the parents still refuse to believe that their children weren't molested.

Actually, overreacting is actually really, really bad. The result can be hundreds of innocent people accused of horrible crimes, which then lead to extreme doubt when real crimes are presented.

"I suggest we imbibe copious amounts of alcohol and just wait for the inevitable blast wave." - Castiel

I think you are giving over-reaction a bad rap. Some people say that Massachusetts over-reacted back in the 1690's, but they haven't had a problem with witches in hundreds of years, so you can't argue with results.

The analogy breaks down a bit when you consider that witches don't actually exist, but statistically speaking, punishing 26 people for a crime zero people committed is similar to punishing 45,000 people for a crime 10 people committed.

I think you are giving over-reaction a bad rap. Some people say that Massachusetts over-reacted back in the 1690's, but they haven't had a problem with witches in hundreds of years, so you can't argue with results.

The analogy breaks down a bit when you consider that witches don't actually exist, but statistically speaking, punishing 26 people for a crime zero people committed is similar to punishing 45,000 people for a crime 10 people committed.

Exactly, it's similar and there is talk of it happening again. How is that a bad rap if it accurately applies to the current situation?

I think you are giving over-reaction a bad rap. Some people say that Massachusetts over-reacted back in the 1690's, but they haven't had a problem with witches in hundreds of years, so you can't argue with results.

The analogy breaks down a bit when you consider that witches don't actually exist, but statistically speaking, punishing 26 people for a crime zero people committed is similar to punishing 45,000 people for a crime 10 people committed.

Exactly, it's similar and there is talk of it happening again. How is that a bad rap if it accurately applies to the current situation?

I think you are giving over-reaction a bad rap. Some people say that Massachusetts over-reacted back in the 1690's, but they haven't had a problem with witches in hundreds of years, so you can't argue with results.

The analogy breaks down a bit when you consider that witches don't actually exist, but statistically speaking, punishing 26 people for a crime zero people committed is similar to punishing 45,000 people for a crime 10 people committed.

Exactly, it's similar and there is talk of it happening again. How is that a bad rap if it accurately applies to the current situation?

I don't think you can really separate the institution from the crimes, now that we know more about the extent of the coverup. It went all the way to the top, and lasted a very long time. The institution, therefore, should be punished, along with the people who were running it. I'm not sure it needs to be completely ended, but a two-year suspension of their football program by the NCAA strikes me as appropriate.

Yes, innocent people will lose their jobs, but this kind of thing can't be tolerated. Penn State abused a position of trust with the sole goal of protecting their own reputation, and that kind of behavior needs to be severely punished.

I don't think you can really separate the institution from the crimes, now that we know more about the extent of the coverup. It went all the way to the top, and lasted a very long time. The institution, therefore, should be punished, along with the people who were running it. I'm not sure it needs to be completely ended, but a two-year suspension of their football program by the NCAA strikes me as appropriate.

I agree with this statement except I honestly think it should come from Penn State and not the NCAA, but if it were to come down from the NCAA I wouldn't be upset about it.

Malor wrote:

Yes, innocent people will lose their jobs, but this kind of thing can't be tolerated. Penn State abused a position of trust with the sole goal of protecting their own reputation, and that kind of behavior needs to be severely punished.

This brings us back to the question I've still not gotten an answer to. How did Penn State do it and not individual people? My analogy of the family name earlier in the thread was not responded to and I'm still wondering if I'm understanding right.

This is FACTUALLY untrue. Sandusky did not work at Penn State in 2002 and was not there 'every day' saying hello to people in the locker rooms or halls. NO attacks in the Grand Jury report happened at PSU after 2002. Does not mean there weren't any, just that we have no evidence of it currently.

It's statements like these, made without knowledge of the situation and based mostly on visceral emotions and reactions on ANY side of this discussion that do not serve to give justice to the victims and tend to only bring more pain on anyone involved.

Edit: Reread the report to verify timing of PSU locker room attacks.

So Sandusky was fired immediately after the rape occurred? If not, I can only assume he was banned from the campus? Did any of his fellow coaches immediately refuse to work with a known child rapist?

Sandusky remained a part of the Penn State football program long after the 2002 attack that McQueary witnessed. It was reported today that as of last spring he was still actively recruiting for PSU.

So what we have at minimum is a number of PSU coaches and administrators knowingly sending a child rapist to the homes of high school seniors to recruit them.

Sorry, that's beyond reprehensible.

“When I discovered a new plant, I sat down beside it for a minute or a day, to make its
acquaintance and hear what it had to tell.” -- John Muir

I don't think you can really separate the institution from the crimes, now that we know more about the extent of the coverup. It went all the way to the top, and lasted a very long time. The institution, therefore, should be punished, along with the people who were running it. I'm not sure it needs to be completely ended, but a two-year suspension of their football program by the NCAA strikes me as appropriate.

The question is whether it's the NCAA's job to punish the institution for this kind of thing. I thought about this for a while, and the best analogies I can come up with are these: should the Oscars punish Roman Polanski by making his films ineligible for awards? Should the EcoCAR competition disqualify a school from competition if the engineering department was found to be engaged in this kind of coverup?

It's about whether it's the NCAA's job to punish a school if an athletic program engages in criminal behavior that has nothing to do with athletics. That's a tough question. If we're going to punish the institution, well, this seems to go right up through the football program and into the administration at large, including the campus police: should the college as a whole be punished in some way? It seems we're beyond just singling out the football program if we're talking about punishment on an institutional basis.

I played college football. I think athletics are just like any extracurricular activity like the school newspaper or outdoor club or whatever. They're all part of a well-rounded liberal arts education. That said, we're far from the days where the "student-athletes" playing a D1 schools are just students that happen to play football. So far away that people are actively talking as if NCAA football is completely detached from the function of the university. In that context, why is taking away their team temporarily the end of the world? This is an educational institution, no? I would say this is a situation where, while I might not make this call, I could completely understand how someone could say "Hey, Penn St., you screwed up. You don't get to have nice things anymore. That includes football for a while".

Colleges shut down programs and activities all the time for far lesser reasons. That college football is so sacred is part of the sickness.

Sorry, that's kind of my thing. I'm not always sarcastic in PC, but I usually am, when I am faced with situations or logic that seem to me to have ridiculous portions the best way I see to carry across that opinion is to hypothesis a situation which is very similar, but with those same sections ballooned out of control. Sometimes I don't have a perfect analogy, especially if I'm drawing from past events, but if there is a large hole in the analogy (like witches not existing why pedophiles do exist) I do try to put it right after the analogy like I did above to avoid confusion.

This brings us back to the question I've still not gotten an answer to. How did Penn State do it and not individual people? My analogy of the family name earlier in the thread was not responded to and I'm still wondering if I'm understanding right.

I don't think you are--I'll quote the earlier post for convenience here:

gregrampage wrote:

Let's say my brother commits a crime. He shares the same last name as me. Let's say my sister, with the same last name, covers it up to protect our family name. Should I be punished as a member of the family? Because it was covered up to protect my name?

I think this is the point goman is trying to make. The coverup was in the name of Penn St. football, therefore Penn St. footbal is implicated. Am I getting this right?

edit: It's more like if you and your brother and sister owned a company. Your brother did a lot of bad things on company property, and your sister used the company to cover them up, and so we're going to punish the company. You're being affected, but you're not being directly punished.

i.e. Penn State is more like a company than a family name.

Not saying there isn't a lot to the discussion of when punishment of an institution needs to take into account the indirect effects it will have on the innocent people who are connected to that institution, but that the discussion starts with distinguishing collective punishment of individuals from punishment of an institution where some of the individuals with connections to that institution are innocent.

Sorry, that's kind of my thing. I'm not always sarcastic in PC, but I usually am, when I am faced with situations or logic that seem to me to have ridiculous portions the best way I see to carry across that opinion is to hypothesis a situation which is very similar, but with those same sections ballooned out of control. Sometimes I don't have a perfect analogy, especially if I'm drawing from past events, but if there is a large hole in the analogy (like witches not existing why pedophiles do exist) I do try to put it right after the analogy like I did above to avoid confusion.

So Sandusky was fired immediately after the rape occurred? If not, I can only assume he was banned from the campus? Did any of his fellow coaches immediately refuse to work with a known child rapist?

He was not fired in 2002 because he was not employed by the university. His access to campus was curtailed but apparently not completely or well enough. He was not a known child rapist at the time, and still is not a known child rapist given that he has not been convicted of anything as of yet.

(although I think he is guilty as hell and he reaffirms my support for the death penalty)

Bear wrote:

Sandusky remained a part of the Penn State football program long after the 2002 attack that McQueary witnessed. It was reported today that as of last spring he was still actively recruiting for PSU.

The report that he was recruiting for the football team is a rumor and if true would be a major NCAA infraction.

bear wrote:

So what we have at minimum is a number of PSU coaches and administrators knowingly sending a child rapist to the homes of high school seniors to recruit them.

So what we have at a minimum is a likely child rapist and a lot of rumors and assumptions. This situation kind of reminds me of the Duke lacrosse case.

Don't get me wrong, anyone that had anything to do with this misconduct should be fired and stripped of their pensions, and imprisoned if warranted. But it will take years for justice to be served and the whole truth to be known.

Why should we conclude, when the members of a football organization cover this up, that the coverup corresponds to football? If sexual abuse occurs in a dentist's office and is covered up, do we say that the perpetrators cared more about dentistry than they did about the victims? This was an example of people trying to cover their own asses and the asses of their friends. Careers and lives were at stake, and not just the rapist's.

I would suggest that where it comes to over and under-reaction, you should pick whichever one is most proportionate. Not reacting is bad; making social excommunication the penalty for any sort of association to rape is also bad in that it puts the associated people in a horrible predicament and causes them to do awful things. The most likely result of dismantling the school's football program will, in fact, be ensuring that other football programs go to even greater lengths to conceal this sort of crime.

I suspect the number one reason why rape is rarely reported is that for almost everyone involved (sometimes including the victim) the best-case scenario is the crime never being made known. Friends don't know how to be supportive, can be judgmental, distrustful. Witnesses will often be accused of involvement (and, in the legal system, often convicted on no evidence at all). In court, the defense will leverage our more disgusting cultural tendencies to assert that the victim is somehow to blame. Anyone who testifies will be publically torn to shreds. As a people, we seem to expect our peers to behave as avatars of justice in these situations, and then when they do not we condemn them as being basically the same as the actual rapist. We have sympathy for the victim and hatred for the social system which allowed her to be victimized (which is complex and far-reaching, and almost always includes the witnesses).

As it stands, rape is a pretty easy thing to get away with. All the interests run in the rapist's favor. The intense stigma around rape essentially allows rape to occur, rather than discouraging it. This is a bad thing.

A very interesting discussion and plenty of debate, but I hope we can all agree that this comes from the "WTF??!!!??!!??" department:

If all the institutions that work with children-- from schools to Scouts to sports leagues -- want to stand together to prevent child abuse, the Catholic Church would "exuberantly welcome" the chance to join in "a major national educational campaign" to prevent abuse, the leader of the American bishops said Monday.

The erupting scandal at Penn State brought the horrors of the Catholic clerical sex abuse crisis back into the headlines this month and it made the bishops freshly "bow our heads in shame and contrition," said Archbishop of New York Timothy Dolan, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, at the annual fall meeting in Baltimore on Monday.

Um... no thanks.

"People don't need to be born again; they need to grow up." - Bishop Shelby Spong
"Medusa had a death stare too, until she met Phoenix Rev." - PRG013

A very interesting discussion and plenty of debate, but I hope we can all agree that this comes from the "WTF??!!!??!!??" department:

If all the institutions that work with children-- from schools to Scouts to sports leagues -- want to stand together to prevent child abuse, the Catholic Church would "exuberantly welcome" the chance to join in "a major national educational campaign" to prevent abuse, the leader of the American bishops said Monday.

Um... no thanks.

I guess it's like the hacker that gets caught, goes to jail, reforms themselves, and becomes a security consultant?

Assuming of course that the 'reform' has taken place, just to keep things on track.

Bob Costas did a short phone interview with Sandusky, and wow, I was not expecting Sandusky to say ... that. His attorney is an idiot, or Sandusky has no sense and deliberately disobeyed his attorney (I'm guessing the latter). Even Costas looked like he was taken aback ...

So I want to say I was really touched by the prayer ceremony before the Penn State-Iowa game, and that for a brief shining moment my faith in humanity was slowly being restored.

Then this morning I saw that Sandusky is walking free after posting bail. And better yet, the judge who hooked him up is a big supporter of his rape victim grooming - er volunteer - program Second Mile.

Leaving aside questions of employment status and what not, my issue is this: The claim continues to be made that due diligence was done by Paterno and the other guy when this got reported to...well, not any sort of police, but that's a different matter. But they continued to work with him, infrequently or not, and it seems they never went back to any authority and said "Hey, remember when we saw that guy raping a child in our locker room? Whatever happened with that?" I'm not going to be able to contain my sarcasm--this was not seeing him drunk and making out with not-his-wife at a bar, and it was not due diligence that renders them blameless scapegoats. Personally, and my perspective is one stemming from having worked with abuse victims and abusers, raping a child is not the sort of crime you wash your hands of once you've made a report--at the very least, they should have persisted in the hopes of getting the victim the help he pretty desperately needed, because given time the abused tend to become abusers.

I agree completely with every word. It's frustrating when the amount of negligence you're describing is the conservative position you are arguing people back towards.

Students expressing inarticulate frustration and anger is different thing. They've had time to rally and turn the protest movement into positive events like the candlelight vigil and the PSU-Nebraska prayer.

Leaving aside questions of employment status and what not, my issue is this: The claim continues to be made that due diligence was done by Paterno and the other guy when this got reported to...well, not any sort of police, but that's a different matter. But they continued to work with him, infrequently or not, and it seems they never went back to any authority and said "Hey, remember when we saw that guy raping a child in our locker room? Whatever happened with that?" I'm not going to be able to contain my sarcasm--this was not seeing him drunk and making out with not-his-wife at a bar, and it was not due diligence that renders them blameless scapegoats. Personally, and my perspective is one stemming from having worked with abuse victims and abusers, raping a child is not the sort of crime you wash your hands of once you've made a report--at the very least, they should have persisted in the hopes of getting the victim the help he pretty desperately needed, because given time the abused tend to become abusers. They should have asked about Sandusky's status and demanded an answer, because as we can see now, clearly the answer was not "Oh, no, big misunderstanding. See? Here's how we know."

Sex crimes are very insidious, because as we can see here, they can be ignored. If Sandusky had been witnessed bludgeoning the kid to death, I really doubt Joe telling the guy who runs the guy who runs the campus police would be considered due diligence.

This is FACTUALLY untrue. Sandusky did not work at Penn State in 2002 and was not there 'every day' saying hello to people in the locker rooms or halls. NO attacks in the Grand Jury report happened at PSU after 2002. Does not mean there weren't any, just that we have no evidence of it currently.

It's statements like these, made without knowledge of the situation and based mostly on visceral emotions and reactions on ANY side of this discussion that do not serve to give justice to the victims and tend to only bring more pain on anyone involved.

Edit: Reread the report to verify timing of PSU locker room attacks.

So Sandusky was fired immediately after the rape occurred? If not, I can only assume he was banned from the campus? Did any of his fellow coaches immediately refuse to work with a known child rapist?

Sandusky remained a part of the Penn State football program long after the 2002 attack that McQueary witnessed. It was reported today that as of last spring he was still actively recruiting for PSU.

So what we have at minimum is a number of PSU coaches and administrators knowingly sending a child rapist to the homes of high school seniors to recruit them.

Sorry, that's beyond reprehensible.

Sandusky was not an employee of the university at the time. He could not be *fired*. Please get the fact straight, HE WAS NOT COACHING AND HAD NO FELLOW COACHES TO REFUSE TO WORK WITH HIM. Also, he was not (and is not) a KNOWN CHILD RAPIST. I'm trying very hard not to sarcastically comment about your knowledge of the rule of law right now. As much as I vehemently disagree with the conditions of Sandusky's bail, he is still a man yet to be convicted of a crime. If you wish to amend your comments to say that his alumni and charity coworkers consented to work with an ALLEGED child rapist, than I would agree with you and say it was far too much suspicion to allow him to continue doing whatever it was he was doing for both the university and the charity.

And Bear, keep in mind who is responsible for BANNING this guy. The athletic director at PSU. The same guy (Tim Curley) who is charged with lying to the Grand Jury and failing to report this crime. And on that level, I am REALLY PISSED OFF (hopefully around the same amount as you), that this handful of individuals protected this man.

And it's the same reason I can have no opinion as to what should happen to the PSU football program. As far as I am aware, there were a very few individuals who were involved in protecting this pedophile. Unfortunately, one of those few was the head of our athletics program, and therefore taints our entire athletic department. And while I am giving JoePa the benefit of the doubt on actively harboring a pedophile, at the very least he was willing to be mollified by those who did and that in itself is wrong enough to warrant the attention he has already received.

Edit: I see what you are saying about the recruiting. I have no idea in what capacity he was recruiting for Penn State, but if it was on behalf of the university it is especially sick if Curley, Schultz, Paterno or McQueary knew that Sandusky was visiting high school campuses.

EditEdit: and looking back I see that Greg already said all this. Good on you, Greg.